Industry News

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in LOS ANGELES, WIXEN MUSIC PUBLISHING is accusing streaming service SPOTIFY USA of streaming millions of unlicensed songs in what it calls “massive, systemic copyright infringement.” NBC reports, “the suit includes a 265-page list of thousands of its songs that WIXEN says SPOTIFY is streaming without proper licensing […]

UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP has inked a global deal with FACEBOOK to license its recorded music and publishing catalogs to the social media giant for use in video across its Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Oculus platforms. Users will be permitted to upload videos with licensed music from UMG under the agreement, and the companies plan to […]

Spotify is reportedly in talks with the the music arm of Chinese net giant Tencent to swap 10% stakes in each other’s businesses ahead of expected public market listings next year. In addition to greater collective bargaining power, there are some interesting and important unintended consequences of a deal for both companies. ___________________________ By Mark […]

Posted on November 20, 2017 by Matt Bacon So Warped tour is ending and this is a larger symptom of a huge problem the industry is going to be facing in the next few years. In the interview where he dropped the bomb, Warped tour founder said, “We were doing fine, but we had a […]

Pandora has added Alexa powered voice control of Sonos wireless speakers from within the music streamer’s app. Many anaylyats believe that voice control of music is the killer app that will bring music streaming into the mainstream. Pandora today added voice control of Sonos wireless speakers from its mobile app. More than 50% of U.S. […]

YouTube has partnered with Ticketmaster to allow musical artists to sell tickets to U.S. concerts via their YouTube videos. The video site began featuring numerous artists’ upcoming U.S. tour dates on videos on the video site, including concerts for Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, The Chainsmokers, and more. The concert listings (including dates and venues) appear […]

Looking for top quality studio monitors but not sure which are the best to buy? Well you’re in luck, as today we show you seven monitors that will suit any setup type. Professional studios will spend (easily) over $10,000 on a pair of monitors, and usually have at least two pairs. You don’t need to […]

A technical problem has caused the follower counts on many independent Spotify playlists to drop, often by the thousands. Several independent record labels who curate their own playlists first noticed the problem. “Each day we undertake a data processing job to synchronise data – including playlist follower counts – between different systems,” said a Spotify […]

Amazon is now the 3rd largest paid music subscription service in the world, according to a new MIDiA analysis. Their just published report looks at Amazon’s streaming music strategy and how this fits within the wider competitive landscape. Some highlights from MIDiA analyst Mark Mulligan: ___________________________________ Back in the days when online music meant online […]

As a growing number of women out movie mogul Harvey Weinstein for decades of sexual abuse, the music industry is being forced to confront its own culture of harassment. This week rocker Marilyn Manson parted ways with his longtime bassist Twiggy Ramirez after rape allegations surfaced; and Canadian electropop group Crystal Castles lead singer Alice Glass […]

[UPDATED] The Music Business Association (Music Biz) conference will stay in Nashville through 2020. The already announced 2018 edition will be May 14-17 at the Omni Nashville Hotel. But the following year, the action moves across the street to the new JW Marriott hotel. The next Music Biz conferences are set from May 5-8, 2019 and May 11-14, 2020, at the […]

Facebook is testing a major change to is basic algorithm – the one that decides what shows up in a followers news feed – that will completely change music marketing on the social platform; unless, of course, one is willing to pay to be seen. Facebook is testing a change that would shift all non-promoted […]

[UPDATED] A new study commissioned by the Worldwide Independent Network (WIN) looks at the global market share of independent music labels based on copyright, rather than distribution, and reveals a very healthy indie sector on the rise. ________________________ A new WINTEL 2017 report shows indie labels capturing 38.4% of the global recorded music market. Commissioned […]

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC) today announced the launch of Fender Play, a first of its kind video-based learning platform for desktop and iPhone, poised to innovate the guitar education landscape. Fender Play is designed to change the way beginning players learn how to play guitar through hundreds of easy-to-follow, instructor-guided video lessons utilizing a […]

PANDORA MEDIA has made a move to reduce pressure from shareholders, asking major record labels for money or better deal terms to help the webcaster reverse losses. BLOOMBERG reports, “Top executives at PANDORA have reached out with a couple of proposals for their counterparts at the record labels, which sell PANDORA the rights to vast […]

The amount of money pouring into record companies from sync keeps on growing. According to IFPI figures, record companies accrued $355m from licensing their tracks to video games, movies and TV in 2015 – up 6.6% year-on-year. The US is the world’s largest sync market, accounting for 57% of 2015’s revenue with $203m, while other […]

We all know that the world of recorded music is always changing. High resolution audio has already penetrated the audiophile marketplace. Now it’s the mass market’s turn. In order to bring everyone who loves music up-to-date on the status of high resolution audio, we turned to the ultimate sources — Owen Kwon, President of Astell&Kern, […]

Entire iTunes collections are going AWOL, downloads are getting mangled, IDs are fighting with one another, and Apple Music is acting weird again. What needs to change? Has iTunes become an unmanageable monstrosity? In the latest battle against its own ‘bloatware,’ Apple sent two engineers to a user’s home after 122 GB of his personal music collection vanished […]